Nor Cease from Mental Fight: Grooming Mycroft
by Tammany Tiger
Summary: This is really a continuation of "Midyear Assessment." Once I'd postulated Mycroft having mentors in MI6, I found I needed them to have their own version of a midyear assessment of their young protege. And once I had to have that, well, the rest fell into place. Takes place in a universe where "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" blends seamlessly into "Sherlock."


**My headcanon already tries to blend Mycroft's backstory with the most recent version of *Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy." In this case I just let George Smiley and Peter Guillam become Mycroft's mentors, trainers, and the hands that silently placed him at George Smiley's desk in the end. So it's a crossover, I guess. But to me it's "not a crossover," becuase somehow to me it just flows so well: as though those two fictions were always part of the same AU from our Real World.**

**And thanks to people who pointed me at online copies of "Hearse." I have seen it now. (LOL-I have seen the Elephant.) Much appreciated.**

'He wants to be reassigned back to Analysis," said the man in charge of Project Tzaritsa. "Hates field work. Hates it like fire."

"He stays where he is," Control said. He was an old man, now. Too old for the job, in his opinion. But he'd hold this point as long as it took to find a replacement. A real replacement, not just some ambitious Young Turk.

"George, you can't make him into a field agent. Not for keeps. The leopard doesn't change his spots, and all that. He's miserable. Push him too hard and eventually he's going to just resign and go elsewhere. It's not like the world is overburdened with analysts of his caliber."

"Peter, is he any good?"

The man in charge of Project Tzaritsa leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers, and pondered the question. "Quite good, actually. Oh, he's got limits—he sounds like an upper class twit in Russian as much as in English. But he knows his limits, he uses them well and creatively, and so help me, he notices everything. If we could miniaturize him like a transistor and plant him in every hot spot in Europe, the quality of our intel would go up several thousand percentiles. He doesn't just see, he knows what he's seeing. What's important, what's not, what it all means. It's almost like magic."

"Then he stays. Not forever. If you have to, dangle a reward. Two years. Three. Five at most, then we'll bring him in and let him build his own little fief in Analytical. But I need him out there, Peter."

The man in charge of Project Tzaritsa narrowed his eyes. "You're up to something, sir."

"Nothing you don't already know." Control took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "The job gets harder every day, Peter. Not just every year, every day. I can just barely stay on top—but that's because I've been on top a long, long time, and I know what's under my feet. I know how we got here from there. But the sheer flow of detail's slipping out of normal human capacity to process it."

The man in charge of Project Tzaritsa considered. If he had ambitions of his own, he appeared to lay them aside as he considered what his superior was implying. "You're grooming him."

Control nodded. "You're the one who said it. He's like magic. But magic is all well and good. He needs grounding. He needs to know what our agents face every single day. Every single assignment. He has to have field work. Enough field work to know bone deep how the game is played on the ground. I don't want to promote anyone to my place who hasn't been on the field. And even if I did, our masters wouldn't have it. No pure analyst will sit in my chair. He has to stay on the field, Peter."

The man in charge of Project Tzaritsa nodded, still considering. "It's going to take a lot of support, sir. He's good at it, but there are reasons he's miserable. Psych places him as borderline agoraphobic…he can cope with crowds, if he has to, but the man I talked to suggested he's probably finding it similar to working with tiger in the room: always on alert. Never comfortable. And he's got the obvious drawback that goes with those insane senses: he's easily overloaded. Hypersensitive, hyperalert."

Control shrugged. "All the more reason to stick it out now, and be able to control his environment later. Dangle it as a reward, Peter. Lure him with it. 'Someday you'll come in from the cold.' But keep him out there. Please."

A nod.

Control accepted that limited agreement. "Any other issues," he asked. "Any reason I should reassess him now? If he's not fit, I need to know and start looking for other choices. You, for example."

The cool blue eyes showed not one sign of temptation. "No. The truth is I'd rather it were him, if it's anyone. He's as close to objective as I ever hope to see. I think that's his anchor: come back to a point where all the feelings are stripped out, all the bias ripped away. You want things to consider? Consider that he's as fragile as any of us under that ice. Consider he's got vulnerabilities: that junkie brother's running wild in Central Europe right now, being a very naughty boy indeed in the 'Stans and Slavic territories. He's done some work for us, but we took him off the list. Erratic, unreliable, and a temper like a warthog having a bad hair day. But our boy in Belomorsk would walk coals barefoot for him—and considering our boy in Belomorsk's attitude toward propriety and dignity, that's saying something."

"We all have vulnerabilities, Peter."

"Some of us are able to set them aside, sir. Holmes won't set his brother aside. I'm betting that now. He won't."

Control nodded, sadly. "No. Should we…consider doing it for him? The younger brother's a loose cannon."

"No. No, if nothing else, I'd lay long odds on our Holmes figuring it out, and then he'd be lost to us forever. Or at least—if he didn't leave us, I'd never entirely trust him again. He's stop seeing us as his home and his family, if we did that. No knowing who or what he'd settle on next. The Americans?"

Control snorted. "No. Never. The boy's got a Union Jack tattooed on his liver. I suspect when he snores, he snores 'God Save the Queen.' He's English in a way I thought died out with my predecessors. No. He wouldn't abandon us; but he'd start playing the factions, looking endlessly for one good, true needle in this compromised haystack. Once that began he'd be no use—not to himself, not to us. He has to know we're all good—and all evil. Or he's not going to manage."

The man in charge of Project Tzaritsa shrugged. "Either way, it means we leave the brother on the board. Put him under surveillance, perhaps?"

"Oh, by all means. I'm appalled we haven't already."

"We have, but only second level. No one thinks much of him, compared to his brother."

"Put him up two levels. He's worth that much just for his own genius, and never mind his value to his brother. Other concerns about young Holmes?"

A shrug. "He's high-strung. He's skilled with people, but not good at them: he manipulates well, but like a shy man who's learned to fake being an extrovert. He knows the buttons to push, and does so quite brilliantly, but it takes effort, and he's not at ease. Not really. Again—there are reasons he hates field work. People. Too many people. We should bring him in as soon as you think we reasonably can, sir. It's possible the price is too high for him to pay."

"If he can't pay the price, he's not the man I need," Control said, firmly. "I want to bring him in. I will in time. But if he's not strong enough to do what he's doing now, he's absolutely not strong enough to do what I do."

"They're different jobs, sir."

"I know, Peter. But you know as well as I do: in the end it's all down to field work."

"Less and less. We've got other sources of intel these days. Different methods of spying."

"And our boy will master those in seconds. It's this one he's got to learn the hard way."

The man in charge of Project Tzaritsa nodded, reluctantly. "Very well. I see the logic. I'll keep him where he is. Dangle long-term rewards to keep him there. I take it you don't want anyone to know what we're grooming him for?"

"God, no. Not even him, if it can be avoided." Control shook his head. "What a thought. No. Keep it to yourself, Peter."

"I will." He looked at his superior, then. The old man had been here a long, long time. He'd given it a good run. The man in charge of Project Tzaritsa considered, weighing young Holmes against the older man. "He's not half what you are, sir."

"He's not half my age, either, Peter. Give him time. Make him do his field work. Train him properly…and then, lad, wait and see that boy run. The day he takes over my chair, the angels are going to be playing 'Jerusalem,' and it's going to be chariots of fire from one end of the sky to the other."

Years later the man who'd once been in charge of Project Tzaritsa remembered old George saying that. It had been an unusual burst of eloquence. But together they'd seen young Holmes through his years of grooming, and now, as the younger man stepped uneasily into Control's office and took a seat at the desk, Peter Guillam could swear he heard trumpets sound, and the sound of flaming wheels racing overhead.


End file.
